Crypto and DeFi have a lot of applications, especially in third world countries with bad financial systems.
This is obviously speculative investment.
(Even if your local currency is so horrendous it lost more value than Bitcoin this month, less volatile ways of hedging exist. Maybe you bought lower or changed cryptoassets so you've gained far more than BTC fell, but that's speculative investment and trading, not maintaining value)
That sure sounds like a useful product to me.
I think HN is so anti-crypto because so few people in the industry currently have your use-case.
Personally, I think what you're doing is exciting and helps put a value on the utility of paying to run these contracts.
Also the whole DeFi ecosystem allows you to use your tokenized assets in different ways, giving even more value to it.
I think many people have my use case, it's just that you can't really see it unless you live in a country with a very mismanaged central bank. Which in my opinion is becoming more and more common every day.
In any case, many "stablecoins" are ponzi schemes waiting to burst. I would much rather use a government backed currency to hold wealth against inflation than something like Tether.
You say that but imo having a currency that loses 50% it's value every year is worse than holding Tether. I don't trust Tether either and thats why I am holding DAI.
What are you talking about? Tether (and many "stablecoins" like it, including DAI) are entirely based around the idea that they are pegged to the US dollar. If USD has inflation or deflation, so does the coin. The "50%" figure is just completely made up, and you know it - inflation right now is pretty bad, but saying USD lost 50% of its value is just completely and utterly wrong.
>you can't buy USD digitally
...again, this is just blatantly untrue on every level. You can use almost any bank and they will convert it for you. Of course, they will take a fee, but that's much preferable than having to involve yourself with cryptocurrencies backed by cryptocurrencies backed by thin air. Tether is especially egregious with this, and I assume that's why you don't trust it - but from what I'm looking at, DAI is backed by USDC and ETH. MAYBE USDC is being honest with how much money they have, maybe they aren't, and ETH has some very obvious awful problems (e.g. the insane instability).
Overall, you haven't given me literally any reason to believe that holding the flavor-of-the-month stablecoin is in any way, shape, or form better than using actual US dollars.
> The "50%" figure is just completely made up, and you know it - inflation right now is pretty bad, but saying USD lost 50% of its value is just completely and utterly wrong.
I am talking about the Argentine Peso not the US dollar. And this just makes my point stronger. If you think 6% (USD inflation right now) is pretty bad just imagine holding a currency with >50% inflation every year.
> ...again, this is just blatantly untrue on every level. You can use almost any bank and they will convert it for you.
What are you talking about? Not every place has a free market like in the US.
In Argentina the banks only sell you at most 200USD dollars per month and only if you meet very specific requirements. And that's what capital controls mean. The banks are not allowed to sell foreign currencies.
[1] https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2018/07/19/w...
This allows me to hold currencies I wouldn't be able to buy because of capital controls by the government.
It sounds like it falls mostly under illegal transactions because you are using crypto for something that would otherwise be illegal (avoiding capital controls). Is it technically illegal? I don’t know. Is it ethically wrong? I guess not directly. However, I imagine there are also a lot of nefarious reasons somebody might want to avoid capital controls which crypto could also help facilitate.
And either way I don't think grouping "criminal transactions" with "stuff that's illegal in X country" is fair. At many points in history governments outlawed things that are very wrong (e.g. nazi germany) Just because someone doesn't want to succumb to corrupt institutions doesn't mean he/she is a bad guy.
Which makes buying crypto (or stablecoin) illegal online purchase.
Illegal doesn't always means wrong or immoral, depends on whether the laws are good or not.
I am buying an asset that is pegged to the USD dollar. That is not illegal neither is buying USD denominated bonds. In fact the goverment even has sold USD denominated bonds.